Because we are here to stay
by MeowzieChan
Summary: Two Riders decide that meeting others only when the world is ending is not sustainable. So why not do something about that? Part of Riders (Re)United


(Set the night after Heisei Generations Final - placed for my purposes in December 2017. See the endnote for details.)

* * *

The fight is over.

The dual Mogamis and their reality-warping machine have been defeated.

The Kamen Riders, assembled by chance and luck and fate, have once again gone their own ways. Gone off to search, to guide, to help, and even off to their separate worlds.

 _This_ fight is over. But there are always more fights, aren't there?

Two brothers return to their apartment. One of them has been away much longer than the other.

* * *

Parad reaches out, and grabs Emus sleeve before he can fully open the door. "Hey, Emu?"

"Yeah?"

"This. This is real, right? I'm not just dreaming? I need to hear you say it."

Emu opens the door, and turns around. "Come here." He pulls Parad inside, just past the entryway.

Once they're both in, he reaches up to put his hands on Parad's shoulders. "Welcome back."

Parad takes a shaking breath, and then another, before he can answer. "I'm home." His legs give out under him, and he drops down to sit on the floor. "I'm home. I'm home. I'm really home."

Emu sits there next to him for a bit, Parad quietly repeating "I'm home," "I'm back," and "it's real" over and over. Eventually, he trails off into silence.

"Do you want to head to the couch? It'll be more comfortable." Emu asks. Parad nods, but looks uncertain. "Need a hand getting up?" Another nod, much firmer this time. "All right then, come on, up we go."

They only just make it to the couch before they stumble over each other and collapse on it. After a moment of stunned silence, they start laughing – from the absurdity of going right back to normal after so much had gone wrong and after spending two different amounts of time apart.

And if more of the joy of normality is coming from one, and more of the shock of normality is coming from the other, neither of them are going to bring it up. Being connected the way they are lets them not only sense each others feelings, but to actively send them to each other.

It takes a while, but eventually Parad gathers himself enough to talk.

"I'm sorry."

Emu blinks. "What, for chasing after Build? You couldn't have known he was from a different universe."

Parad shakes his head. "Not for that. I would have gone after him whether I knew or not. It's that… I was there for two years. And I was trying to find him so I could get your power back, but I _wasn't able to_ and I," he looks down at the floor, his voice growing somber. "I was so frustrated and desperate, and there were some times I thought I might go back on my promise."

"Wait, what prom- _oh_." Emu's face falls. Parad doesn't look up.

"As far as I knew, it had been two years over here, too. That it had been two years since you were able to transform, and they _need_ you here, and I had to get it back.

"There were… there were a lot of times when I was really furious about what that first Build did and I didn't know what was going to happen when I found him but I don't think it would have been good."

"Parad..." Emu whispers.

"I know, I _know_. I _didn't_ do anything, but I still. I still _could_ have." Parad finally looks up, staring into the middle distance, instead of meeting Emus gaze.

"One of the few things that kept me from going back down that route was thinking of everyone here. I kept going over and over everything I could remember about everyone at CR and about the other Bugsters, so that I didn't give up or quit. I kept reminding myself about how you and everyone else would be so disappointed. Not about how people would be angry, but how I would be _letting you all down_."

Parad groans. "At least it worked out. I made it back, and we all won in the end. But those two… Build and Cross-Z, there's only two other people supporting them, and I don't think that'll be enough.

"I looked for a long time, and there weren't any other Kamen Riders over there. At all. The _idea_ of it is there, but only as fiction. And whoever the other Build was, the one who took your power, he's not the one from today. Emu, I _like_ this Sento guy. He reminds me of you, actually. But if something like all this happens again over there… the two of them don't have anyone else to fall back on for help."

Emu frowns. "This isn't right. This keeps happening, and it isn't right."

Parad finally looks over at him. "What do you mean, 'keeps happening?'"

"Last year, when I met Takeru, we barely made it out of that battle. The other Riders who helped us, our predecessors, they were all on their own – we were lucky that Kouta was able to help Officer Tomari reunite with his partner, and apparently Haruto has been 'traveling' for a long time." Emu puts air quotes around 'traveling.' He continues, getting visibly frustrated as he goes. "And today? Gentarou only just made it in time to help, and Eiji leapt from a sky scraper for the _chance_ to bring his friend back.

"Takeru and his friends were eighteen at most when they became Riders, I think Gentarou was even younger, and they had support, but that's… We all risk our lives doing this, and I didn't understand that going in, so how could they have? How could they have been asked to do that?

"Even here, with all of us – none of us would rely on each other until we didn't have a choice.

"This isn't right. None of this is right."

Emu looks forward, determination written on his face. "It shouldn't take a disaster to bring Riders together."

Parad looks at him. "You're planning something."

Emu turns to face Parad. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. Someone has to do _something_ , and I've managed to build up quite a contact list."

* * *

(one week and a copious amount of planning later)

→ **[Play]**

The camera turns on, showing the main office of CR. Emu is front and center, behind the table. One of the larger monitors is off to one side, and Parad is on the couch behind him to the other, doing something with a tablet.

After taking a breath to steady himself, Emu starts to talk.

"Hello there. I'm Hojo Emu, a doctor with the Cyber Rescue Center, and Kamen Rider Ex-Aid. I've spent the last… well, almost year and a half now fighting the Bugster Virus and trying to stop a handful of different CEOs from using it for world domination."

Parad makes a swiping motion on the tablet, and the monitor switches from screensaver mode to displaying battle footage. It's just a few clips – one showing the Riders facing off against a swarm of Bugster mooks, then of them against a horde of Genm Zombies in front of the corporate building, and finally the last fight against Cronus.

"Things here had largely calmed down until about a few weeks ago," Emu continues. Parad changes the video to one showing the Enigma hands reaching towards each other.

"That's when we got caught up in a situation with parallel worlds and honestly? We were _lucky_. Our team would not have made it out of that fight if we hadn't gotten help from a number of our predecessors." The screen changes to several distant, amateur shots of the older riders in action, some against Nebula Bugsters, and some against the Guardian robots.

"Thank you, by the way, to Kamen Riders OOO, Fourze, Gaim, and Ghost for helping with the Enigma Situation. I'd also like to thank Kamen Riders Drive and Wizard for last year, along with Gaim and Ghost for being there during the. Uh. Pac-Man incident." Footage plays of Pac-Man towering over buildings with a swarm of smaller Pac-drones buzzing around the scene. "Last December was weird.

"Speaking of which," Emu's gaze hardens from 'serious but calm' to 'serious and vaguely terrifying' before he continues. "Ghost. If I find out that you managed to nearly die again after this recent battle and didn't tell anyone, there will be consequences. This is your only warning."

Parad pipes up from behind. "Emu, no."

"But have you considered yes?" Emu retorts over his shoulder, before turning back to the camera. "Anyway. Back to the original point of this message. We knew other Kamen Riders existed, but outside of enormous battles like these, the ones where we get thrown together, no one interacts. Yes, most of us are part of teams or at least fight alongside each other, but outside of those small groups, there's no communication.

"Even after our own battles end, and our respective enemies, whoever they are, have been taken down, there always seem to be circumstances that draw us back into battle. And even after that, once we've met and teamed up and won, everyone just goes back off on their separate ways and possibly never meet again.

"It's not _right_ , and it shouldn't have to be this way."

Parad gets up from the sofa, carrying the tablet with him as he goes to be properly on camera. "That's why we're sending this video out." He waves. "Hi, the name's Parad, Kamen Rider Para-DX. Professional screw-up who could have used an 'anti-evil' intervention about six years before I got one.

"Let's face it, you put on a transformation belt, you're fighting forever. We can't even say that it's until you die, because apparently death isn't nearly as permanent as it usually is once you wear one of these things."

"Parad, I don't think our team is normal for having that happen..."

"No, no, really!" Parad pulls a window up on his tablet, but not sending it to the monitor. "I've been doing research, and apparently a few years ago there was a whole thing going on in Tokyo with the Secretary of Defense, and-"

Emu looks over at the camera. "Parad, we're still filming! We can talk about that later."

"Right! Right, sorry." Parad slides the tablet out of reach. "Getting back on track. None of this is okay. The never seeing each other again, I mean." His hands curl into fists on top of the table.

Emu picks up the thread of discussion. "Look, all of us need some way to at least communicate with each other – with everyone who came before and after us. It can't just happen when things start going world-endingly wrong. We need to keep in touch, keep each other up to date and talking. The only people who can understand what a Kamen Rider goes through is another Kamen Rider, and there are a lot of us.

"So, we're sending this out – Parad and I and the rest of our team here at CR. We want to set up a group of some sort, for all of our fellow Kamen Riders. Each and every one of us needs to be there for each other, and we want to make that happen."

Emu smiles, for the first time in the video. "We're sending this to the Riders that we've met, and we'd like for you all to do the same to those you've met. Let's make this happen."

* * *

The video gets put in an email, and is sent off.

A police officer receives it, winces at a reminder of a series of very bad days, and sends it to a pair of brothers in one city and a colleague in another.

The brothers send it to a leader of a dancing team and a pastry chef, and hope that a friend who became a god comes to visit soon.

The other officer brings it to a detective agency, who send it to a traveling photographer.

A teacher receives it, and sends it to an old classmate.

A man who traded his humanity receives it, and sends it to friends he can never visit again – but technology is incredible and locations can be turned off, and the telephone didn't exist ten thousand years ago when the battle fight originated.

Two separate wanderers receive it – a bit later than others did, but they eventually find themselves places where they can receive email. They send it to their allies.

A young man receives it, winces at the barely-veiled warning, and sends it to his friends who are working for a better future. He thinks he might be able to send it to the first of all of them. He's sure going to try.

A call to action has gone out. It's time for the heroes who fight to protect humanity to band together.

Even a superhero needs a hand with normality sometimes.

* * *

This series is being written because none of the riders could be completely okay after everything they go through, and it really *isn't* fair to them that they only get to reunite when everything has gone horribly wrong.

I'd like to pre-emptively note that the novels do not apply here, and neither does Zi-O, and that will be true for all stories in this series going forward. (At least, until Zi-O either ends or gives me a good way to have Sougo *not* be over-writing everyone's stories.)

Additionally, canon be damned, I'm planning on slightly re-arranging when events from movies and specials occur. As such, I am placing Heisei Gen Final is in December 2017, because setting it 'one year after' True Ending, and thus in September 2018, is not conducive to my efforts.

Comments and criticism are incredibly welcome, and can also be directed over at my tumblr (sailor-cresselia) if you want a slightly more timely reply.

(crossposted from my Ao3 account, SailorCresselia)


End file.
